This Company Is Turning Recycled Ocean Plastic Into Chic Eyewear!

Support OneGreenPlanet

Being publicly-funded gives us a greater chance to continue providing you with high quality content. Please support us!

Recycled plastic is a multipurpose material that can be used in an array of new products instead of just … well … becoming trash. In fact, Barcelona-based brand Sea2See is using it to make something both useful and stylish – eyewear!

Sea2See’s founder, Francois Van den Abeele, has been aware of the problem of plastic pollution in the oceans for a long time, having lived much of his life by the sea, the Independent reports. Seeing just how much plastic waste ends up in the world’s waters, he decided to take the problem into his own hands and started a company that makes use of this plethora of ocean waste.

Advertisement

The company is working with Catalonian port authorities and employing local fishermen to collect the plastic that gets accumulated in trawling boat nets. The gathered plastic waste is divided between what can become eyewear and what can be sold off to other companies that are recycling plastic. Every other day, one ton of plastic waste is collected and taken to the plant, separated, and sent to be turned into the raw material used to produce the glasses. The material is quality tested in the lab and the frames are handmade in Italy.

One pair of Sea2See glasses is made from around 22 pounds of reclaimed plastic.

“The spirit of Sea2See is to create a global consciousness in regards to the issue of sea contamination through a stylish product that anyone can wear with pride,” says the brand’s website.

Every year, around 8.8 million tons of plastic trash end up in the world’s oceans. Once there, it remains a threat to the marine wildlife forever because plastic never truly breaks down – it only breaks into smaller and smaller pieces. Our waterways and landfills are already overflowing with plastic waste – and the pollution takes a toll on land animals as well. Plastic has become practically inescapable – both as part of consumer items lining store shelves, and after it becomes waste, in the oceans, in our tap water, and in the stomachs of wild animals. Companies and projects recycling even just a portion of this omnipresent waste make an important step towards lessening our pollution problem at large – but it is up to all of us to minimize the amount of plastic we buy and use every day.